


tequila moonrise

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, if you are squeamish about family fic, this is not the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-09 21:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10422183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Sri Lanka, February 2016.Dan. His mum.A lot of shots.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _"I almost didn't answer," he says. "It's so late."_
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> _"Sorry." Dan sounds genuinely apologetic and also genuinely drunk. "My mum challenged me to shots at the bar."_
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> _"She won, didn't she?"_
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> Companion fic to [come back home to you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5978857).

Sri Lanka is a wild and wonderful place with many sights for Dan to see and experience. 

His mum sitting at the bar at half eleven with a bartender making eyes at her is not one of them. 

*

She's made a friend. 

"Daniel! Come have a seat." She pats the stool next to her. "Meet my new friend Sahan. Sahan is a very nice man, aren't you?" 

"Nice man," Sahan agrees. 

Sahan is the bartender. 

"And we're friends," she repeats, smiling at him. 

"Good friends." Sahan's smile is more of a leer. 

Dan sits down on the stool, glaring at him. "Always happy to meet a friend of my mum's." 

"No!" Sahan says, staring wide-eyed. "Too young to have a son so old!" 

Dan's mum giggles. She actually giggles. "Oh, I'm ancient. Past my prime." 

Sahan does not seem to understand exactly what this means, but still gets the gist of it and shakes his head. "Beautiful, so beautiful." 

"Beautiful enough for another round of shots? Since I'm sharing with my darling firstborn now." 

Sahan delivers them promptly. She slides one to him and he grasps it between his fingers, unsure what else to do. 

They knock them back at the same time. 

*

"Do I want to know why you're drunk at close to midnight?" Dan asks. 

"I'm not drunk," she says. "I'm drinking." 

Dan snorts. "There's a difference?" 

"One is a state of being," she says. "The other is how you get there." 

She is not, he realizes, actually drunk. Not that he's seen her drunk all that much in his life, even more rarely his adult life, but he does know what a drunk person looks like and she is not one. 

"Deep," he says. 

She grins at him. The dark in her hair comes from a bottle now, and he knows there are lines on her face that weren't there when he was a kid, but in the half-light of the bar time almost disappears. 

She looks like she did when he was young. She looks like she could be the same, but he is not the same. 

Sahan brings another round. 

*

"Parents are shit sometimes, you know that?" She looks at him. "Your Nana shouted at me for letting your brother wander off on his own. Because heaven forbid I think my son is responsible enough to make some travel memories on his own. Let him find a pretty girl if he wants. Let him have a bit of fun."

"Oh," Dan says. He takes another sip of his drink. "She shouted at you?" 

"Yes, in that mum voice of hers. You know the one." She adopts an impatient edge to her voice. "Now when he comes up missing, what do you think people will say? Whose fault will it be when that happens?" 

Her impression is spot on, Dan has to admit. 

"Does she do that a lot?" He asks. 

His mum laughs. "All the time, since you were born." She raises her hand, and Sahan is there in an instant. The sweet smile she puts on her face is perfectly innocent, yet Dan feels like he should look away. "Tequila still alright with you, love?" 

"More shots?" Dan hasn’t done this many shots in at least a year. He and Phil are more cocktails-with-dinner people than shots at midnight people. 

"Unless you're afraid your old mum will out-drink you?" She looks at him with challenge in her eyes. That look hits him like a punch. He remembers that look. In the back garden, daring him to try and beat her in a race when he was old enough and his legs were long enough to really give her chase. Stubbornly determined to master the video games Dan begged her to play with him, knowing Dan only asked because he couldn't beat his dad. Fierce, determined, willing to put the time into perfecting something just to say she was the best at it. 

He was usually bored of the games by the time she got them mastered, denying her the satisfaction of what would most likely have turned into a victory. 

It's probably just the alcohol, but he feels a little breathless as he laughs and says, "You're on." 

*

"Why don't you tell me about your life?" She asks. 

It's a request, not an accusation, Dan thinks. Everything is a little blurry now. 

"My life is good," Dan says. "It's - good. Phil's good. Show's good." 

"You're always good," she says, curling her fingers around one of the shotglasses. She tips it back without waiting for him to speak. "You've done so well, haven't you?" 

She's not looking at him. 

He does the same, tipping the shot back. It burns down his throat. 

"Not always," he says. "I'm not always good."

Now she looks. She's more curious than concerned, but there is concern there. "Yeah. I'm not always either. But who is, right? Life is all about-" She waves a hand. "Ups and downs." 

His ups are a struggle and his downs last too long. 

But she isn't wrong. 

(Maybe she'll ask, later. Maybe he'll even answer with the truth instead of the usual tight, "I'm fine. It's fine.")

*

Another drink arrives, delivered by Sahan but at the request of someone else this time. 

Sahan does not seem thrilled but he points to a man a few tables over. "At his request." 

"Why thank you." Dan's mum turns and waves at him. She takes a drink of the colorful concoction then makes a face, and slides it toward Dan. "Do you still like the sweet ones best? That's too much for me."

"I'll take it," Dan says. He takes a sip and almost chokes on the cloyingly sugary flavor. "Phil would like this one." 

Sahan comes back with a napkin. He looks even more aggrieved as he hands it to her. It has a hotel room number written on it. 

"Oh my god," Dan says. 

"Here." She reaches out and places it in front of him. "You can have them both, the drink and the number." 

"Mum!" 

"What? He's not that bad looking. Phil wouldn't allow you some holiday fun?" She turns toward the man and points at Dan. 

The man is very confused. 

"I hate you so much." Dan says, burying his face against his hand. The bar is sticky and smells slightly sour but it's better than the mortification of reality right now. Also, his head is heavy, when did it get so heavy? 

So heavy. 

He feels a sharp poke to his upper arm and yelps, head flying up. 

"You can't be sleepy yet," she says. "Come on, we're bonding." 

"We're getting pissed," Dan corrects her. "I don't even know how this happened." 

"Because, as your Nana would love to remind you, I'm a horrible parent with lax morals and it's a wonder either of my boys have gotten anywhere in life." 

"Does she really say that?" Dan frowns. 

She stares at Dan, then shakes her head. "It's not for you to worry about. She just loves you, is all." 

"She loves you, too," Dan says. "She tells me I should call you every time I talk to her on the phone."

"I love her, too," his mum says. "I just get very mad at her sometimes." 

"Yeah." Dan doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't know what's going to stick in the permanent record of their memories and what they'll never mention again. He feels vulnerable, suddenly. He's already missing one phantom limb in the form a person he's used to having by his side, always. Now she's chipping away at another form of armor he wears almost like a badge of pride, his obliviousness to the fact that his mother is a person outside of being his mother. That she’s a daughter, too, and maybe they’re more alike than he thought.

He lifts his hand to catch Sahan's attention. "Two more." 

*

Dan has tears of laughter in his eyes. 

His mum is telling him about a woman that came into her office, and brought her three children and dog with her. 

“She wanted them in the room!” She says. “Right there in the room with us! And i didn’t know what to do, so I let her bring them in - and I was worried the dog was going to piss on one of the chairs or something, but the toddler - couldn’t be more than three, the toddler! Just pulls his nappy down and shits right on the floor.” 

Dan is actually gasping for air. 

“I spent the entire hour just imagining what sort of island I’m going to move to when I decide to give up on the whole fucking world,” she says. “It’s going to have a hammock out back.” 

Dan wipes his eyes. “Can I come visit?” 

“Mm.” She makes a noncommittal sound. “We’ll see.” 

“I’ll bring ice cream,” he offers. 

“All right, you can visit if you’ve got ice cream.” She agrees. “Ooh, wouldn’t that be fantastic right now? Sahan!” 

Sahan wanders over. By this point, he just looks tired. 

“Do you serve ice cream?” 

“We do not, I am afraid,” he says. 

“Dan.” She looks at him and sighs. “No ice cream.” 

“Ice cream tomorrow?” Dan asks. 

“Yes, we’ll get ice cream tomorrow.” She pats his hand. “Good idea.” 

*

"Phil would have loved the wildlife parks," Dan says. 

It's out of nowhere, just breaking the silence they've lapsed into. 

"Did you send him pictures?" She asks. 

"Loads," Dan says. "Tried to, at least. The service is so shit here it's hard to tell what went through." 

She starts to laugh. "Surprised you haven't gone to find a cat, then." 

"A cat?" Maybe she's more drunk than he thought. 

"Yeah, you remember - that one year, in India. You were so desperate to get on the internet. You up and left us all, in such a fit, and stayed gone for hours. When you came back you said you'd almost adopted a cat, you had those pictures of it on your lap." 

Dan does remember that. Mostly he remembers being pissed off at the world, missing Phil and missing his home and like he was being denied the basic human right of online connectivity. 

He remembers the cat, though, warm and purring on his lap. He remembers texting pictures to Phil. He doesn't remember telling his parents about it, and that makes him suddenly sad. 

"There are more dogs here," Dan says. "Maybe I'll find a dog instead." 

"You do love dogs, don't you?" 

"Yeah. Me and Phil are gonna get one, when we move." 

"You're moving?" She asks. 

"Not - not soon. It's not like, a thing. We've got the whole rest of the tour this year, but after that, we've talked about like. Maybe. Finding a house?" He stumbles through the sentence, because his tongue is tripping over itself with inebriation and also maybe just nerves, the ability to confide in anyone that isn't Phil atrophied like a muscle gone too long without use. 

She reaches out and grabs his hand. "I'm so." She stops, smiling shakily. "I'm glad you're good. That you've done so well." 

She's definitely drunk now. 

But he's tearing up again, this time blinking hard against it, so maybe he is too. 

*

He goes to take a piss, and when he comes back his mum is telling Sahan about the concerts Dan used to put on in their living room. 

“The more people would show up, the more numbers he’d add to the act,” she says. “It was fantastic. My born entertainer.” 

“I’m cutting you out of my will,” Dan says, reclaiming his barstool. “In the semi-likely event of my untimely demise, you get nothing.” 

“That’s no way to treat your mother.” She doesn’t appear to be taking him that seriously. 

He ups the stakes. “Also, I’m stealing Colin.” 

“Your brother will fight you over that one,” she says. “It’s the only reason he comes home to see me, just the same as you.” 

Dan frowns, but ultimately decides he’s not equipped to deal with that barb. 

(And he’s not even sure she meant it as one. Either alcohol is impairing his judgement, or unimpairing it.) 

“Fine,” he says. “You can keep the dog.” 

She cheers as though she’s actually just won something. Half a dozen other people in the bar cheer as well. “Good. I’ve got at least one boy I can trap at home forever. Or at least the rest of his natural lifespan, which will be tragically shorter than mine.” 

“Morbid,” Dan says, but he’s smiling. 

*

He's lost track of how many shots he's had. He's lost track of what time it is. He's almost asleep sitting up. 

She reaches out and rubs his back. It makes him feel young. "Come on, little bear. Time for bed." 

"Mum," he whines. "Don't call me that."

"I birthed you, I'll call you what I want." Her voice sounds so clear. Nothing about Dan feels clear. "Can you make it to your room?" 

He gets to his feet. The world tilts a little but does not spin, not yet. "I think so. You?" 

She yawns. "I'll be fine. Might go for a walk, enjoy the moonlight." 

Dan frowns. 

He wants to ask what's wrong, still. Because he didn't, not really. Maybe part of him doesn't want to know. He's not ready yet to be someone his mother tells her problems to. It's selfish, maybe, but he's just not. 

Besides, he said he'd call Phil, and that's been hours now. So he just says, "Okay. Night, Mum." 

She reaches out and touches his hair, pushing damp curls back from his forehead. "Sleep tight, sweetheart."

*

The aircon in his room is a blissful respite from the heat outside. 

He sits down on the bed and takes a moment to try and grasp with firm hands at least one of the thoughts swirling in his head: Phil. 

He’ll ring Phil, because he was supposed to and he didn’t and he needs to talk with someone about how fucking weird this whole night has been and Phil... Phil is who he talks to, his person to tell everything to. 

(He wonders if his mum has ever had a person like that. He wonders if it’s his dad, or maybe if once upon a time there was someone else.)

The phone starts to ring. 

*

Dan sleeps in past breakfast in the morning, waking up with a throbbing headache and a phone down to single digit percents. 

He groans and grabs his charger, plugging it in. He has a few messages from Phil, mostly telling him to drink more water, and one from his mum sent barely an hour before that just reads. 

_Ice cream?_

He stares up at his ceiling and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Shoe for beta reading!
> 
> [Read and reblog on tumblr](http://slightlydizzier.tumblr.com/post/158778332509/title-tequila-moonrise-rating-t-word-count-24k), if you are so inclined.


End file.
